RAISING THE DEAD (GUEST POST)

Tweet

As part of my efforts in supporting my fellow bloggers, please welcome Bama’s first (hopefully not last) blog entry here on TGK. While I am a self-professed blogger, I thought it would be a good idea to bring on a guest blogger to get a new perspective. So, without further delay, here is Bama’s first blog post. If he touches you, please let him know with your comments.

I've often deemed myself an outcast among a group of outcasts when it comes to my fit within the LGBT community, more specifically, the black LGBT community. As I've grown from the person I was at the age of 19 to the person that I am now at the age of 24, I still can't help but think of myself as different from my peers. Maybe I have some type of separatism complex where I subconsciously want to exclude myself from the pack, but if that is the case, why do I have sporadic bursts of a need to belong? I can only wonder if I've fully accepted myself for who I am.

Oxymoronic it is to think of one's self as possessing a complex simplicity of demeanor and thought, or maybe it's better to label it as insecurity. Whatever the flavor, I feel that the path to true acceptance can be exhausting. I will say that after years of pretending to be fine, when I really was emotionally unstable, made me all the more side-tracked from embracing my identity. I can't help but think that there are a lot of us that are still trying to find our identity. We are born, raised in different ways, and once on our own, we may not feel as well-adjusted as we think we should be. 

It took me a long time to realize that I shouldn't play up or downplay my sexuality in order to find some happy medium that would make me more appealing to those around me, whether straight or gay; it only made me uncomfortable. I continued to rearrange my emotions to fit an untrue meaning in order to mask my true feelings. After a while, I lost myself. So, the only way out, I figured, was to end my life. The thought was simple: ending my life would end any confusion I had as to who I was. I knew I wasn't straight, and I grew tired of fabricating false feelings to deflect what attention I did gain from females. I also knew that I wasn't the poster child for what it meant to be a young gay black male looking for fun because of the thrilling taboo nature of my same sex desires.

Of course, I didn't go through with my suicide attempt, but I was frighteningly close…paring knife to wrist close. In a way, I think I did die that night or at least the person I did not want to continue to be, died. Since then, I've been resurrecting myself, and I think I get it now. For those who have attempted to end their life, but did not succeed, do you truly recover from almost causing your own death? I'm glad I've stuck around, and it has gotten better for me bit by bit; however, I feel like it's been a long process of raising myself from the dead. I'm here, mind, body, and soul, yet I still don't feel present. Maybe I'm in some sort of limbo, or it could be that in an attempt to erase myself from the world, I also wiped away what little identity I did have of myself, therefore starting all over as a blank slate…a gay tabula rasa.

If that's the case, I should feel freer than I've ever felt before, and in most moments, I have, but I haven't taken advantage of it full on, and maybe I should. I may continue to feel like an outcast from time to time (maybe I should've elaborated on that more . . . my bad), but I don't think the need to be accepted will help me in establishing my identity. Let's just keep it basic: I'm an all around average guy that likes guys. That should work just fine, and I'll just feel in the details as I go.  ;-)

My writing  may be fragmented, I'm not sure, but it's been a while since I've written anything in completion, so I'm just happy to get it out there.

Much love to you,

Bama B.